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The red portal could be cleared with no casualties (death) if you get the right boons.

Sage lv 37 with only the basic nodes done (pic - sagacious breath lv 2 & Vim and vigor lv 1).

Archery scrolls + ice shard lv 4 is essential and double (triple attack) and some normal move power ups really help.

How to do it: The red portal is HARDER than the final boss. It has more monsters including that handsome bulky 🧌 troll.

Since the timer freezes during the red portal battle

1. Do not engage with mardaw immediately and do not chip his health right away. The minions spawn so many but luckily they seem to be in limited quantities. (If you trigger the AOE fast, you have to deal with the minions dodging them while dealing with the doppelgangers which is so dangerous).

Just run in HUGE circles while the bouncing ice shards sweep the minions. Several waves of them would spawn but repeat until the field is pleasantly empty. And save the CDG guage for full.

2. The first picture doesn't show the character well so look at that circle on it, when dealing with the doppelgangers stick to one underneath it and make a line with two and use CDG

Even though it doesn't take two of them instantly, they get close to the bringe of death. The remainings would be done by the shards. Quickly move over to the upper left corner and let the normal attacks deal with the third one. Also move after you have done quite some damage.

3. Move to the right side and repeat, if you manage to do it Mardaw will be stunned, do it 2 times and don't make critical mistakes.

As I emphasize again, time is on your side so don't panic or feel urgent. Calmly do it.

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Though I wouldn't recommend this much since it is really time consuming if you reset the stage several times.

If you somehow run into the shards and especially the Archery rolls and coincidentally having the boons collected, you could challenge it.

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I got so lucky with this red portal. I didn't get a D rank, but guess what, a C rank..!!! \*Sob\*

F2P + Shiverstack kills Mardaw red portal (Archery roll) Nightmare stage